Former IRA bomber Patrick Magee with Jo Berry. Their friendship is dramatised in The Bombing of the Grand Hotel
Photograph: Linda Nylind

A hugely unlikely friendship between an IRA bomber and the daughter of a man he killed is to be explored in a new stage play.

The extraordinary story of the relationship between Jo Berry and the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee will be told in The Bombing of the Grand Hotel.

Sir Anthony Berry, an MP and deputy chief whip in Margaret Thatcher’s government, was one of five people killed in the 1984 attack.

After the bombing, Jo Berry dedicated her life to conflict resolution and met Magee face to to face in 2000, a year after he was released from jail under the terms of the Good Friday agreement.

“I do now call him my friend,” said Berry. “It is an unusual friendship and that is because of what we have experienced together.

“He is not just the person who killed my father in 1984; he has become somebody who travels with me and works with me and we listen to people sharing their stories and opening up. We hear the most extraordinarily difficult stories and people open up and he is very supportive in those situations.”

The play has been jointly written by Julie Everton, whose first play Pig in a Poke won the Royal Court Young Writers Festival, and Josie Melia, writer of the touring comedy drama What Would Helen Mirren Do? While Berry and Magee have helped during the process, Berry stressed that it was the work of the playwrights and dramatic licence had been taken.

“They came to see me talk goodness knows how many times and so a trust built up,” said Berry. “I can’t control what they write, they’re playwrights and it is their play so there has to be an element of trust.”

Berry has read a draft but will not come to a conclusion about the play until she sees it live. She said people reacted to the friendship in different ways: “More often than not [the response] is … if you can do that then I can do this. It calls people to action in a way.

“The challenging part has been that people might think I’ve betrayed my father. I understand that and respect that opinion … I’ve thought deeply over the years about what betrayal is.”

Berry recalled her first meeting with Magee when he used politics “to justify killing my father”.

“I thought I would not be returning for a second meeting and then he changed. He later said he was disarmed by the empathy I gave him; he couldn’t stay in his position of righteousness.”

Berry hopes that it will at least get audiences thinking. “I hope some of the people who watch it will leave the theatre differently, that’s what interests me. They are the plays and films I like to see and the books I want to read, ones which touch me and change something.”